


go back to sleep.

by quadrille



Category: Final Fantasy VIII
Genre: Amnesia, F/M, Gen, Memory Loss, Post-Game(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-20
Updated: 2015-04-20
Packaged: 2018-03-24 23:31:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3788407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quadrille/pseuds/quadrille
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A glimpse of life after Edea, and into the future. No one really thought through the major side-effects of junctioning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	go back to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for a crossover setting with all the Final Fantasy worlds meshed into one, so you'll see mention of aeons, other locations, and cameos by Fran (FFXII) and Lightning (FFXIII).

** wake up. **

 

* * *

 

The alarm clock rings shrilly and his hand reaches out, slams it off, and instead of languishing in bed, he’s already throwing back the sheets and bouncing to his feet. He’s a morning person, irritatingly enough: it’s led to more than a few groggy, sleep-mussed girls grumbling into the sheets, burying a face into his pillow and breathing in his scent, even as he disappears to take the fastest shower on the planet and drag on his rumpled cadet uniform.

He’s always tested well: on paper, Seifer Almasy is a brilliant student. He parrots off historical facts (his mind is a sponge for history, somehow attuned to archaic terminology and antiquated battles), remembers the exact dates when Galbadia declared war, recites theory and strategy, knows which answers are expected from a star SeeD student, knows what the rules are and which ones they ought not to cross, as mercenaries and political meddlers alike. He could be daydreaming in the middle of class—slouched in his seat, arm draped over the back of his chair, one leg crossed over the other, insouciance embodied, staring out the window—when he’s unexpectedly called upon with a question, and he’ll still give a pitch-perfect response.

In practice, Seifer is a fucking awful student.

He knows the rules, and this is why he knows how to skirt them; he acts out during field exams, bristling against the letter of the book, foraying off the charts and maps and blazing his own trail.

 

* * *

 

 He stands by the phone for a long time, staring at the heavy receiver in his hand, wondering why he picked it up.

 

* * *

 

Quistis’ birthday is scribbled in his chickenscratch handwriting (October fourth, and may he never neglect it again), pinned to the board alongside other dates: briefings with commanders, launch dates for missions, report deadlines. He exercises these dates endlessly, drilling himself with troop movements, logistics, all of them flaring vivid and bright in his mind.

But October fourth is next week and he wanted some sort of gesture, some way to communicate without communicating, leaving a present on her desk—but try as he might, he cannot recall what her favourite flowers are. He’s certain he knew it once.

 

* * *

 

They tell the story of how she bailed him out of Lindblum prison, over and over, and the others laugh at just the right places like they’d earmarked those exact points, pausing for the laughter to play itself out. She and Seifer retell it in rapid sequence, well-rehearsed and synchronised as if they’ve told this story a hundred times (and perhaps they have).

But the thing is, they don’t tell the others how they first met; neither of them can remember it anymore. It’s been lost to time, all of their orphanage years wiped clean from the slate.

It is so very hard to tell what’s real and what’s not anymore.

* * *

 

His squad is on mission in Timber, currently holed up for the night and doing their best to pass as locals. His attention straying from the other SeeD, he finds himself staring at the tall, leggy woman on the other side of the bar. Dark skin, curly white hair, a striking appearance, and eyes that seem to bore right through him, staring down her nose at him.

It strikes a chord of something familiar, some sense of _we have been here before_ , a winding wheel repeating itself over and over. He’s seen that look before, and whatever it is, it makes him want to laugh—makes him want to reach out, gently tug that lock of hair corkscrewing by her ear.

He doesn’t like the feeling. He turns back to his beer and his mercenaries, just in time to catch his lieutenant’s punchline, and he laughs, right on cue.

 

* * *

 

Rinoa’s face is burned into his recollection, but mostly thanks to the well-creased photo (it’s not in his wallet, not anymore, his girlfriend would hardly approve). But he sometimes comes across the album of their summer together. The memories are taking on a sepia tint, a blurry sheen, like old fraying clothing that’s been run through the wash too many times: that’s what happens with childhood, isn’t it?

Isn’t it?

Seifer isn’t nostalgic about his teenaged years; he finds that he can talk about them less and less, and while others are trading stories of hapless accidents and adolescent embarrassments, his mind draws a blank.

 

* * *

 

He remembers Lightning, though, and it’s enough to make him avoid her. They went through hell together, but they’ve always been too volatile for each other, too caustic: it was like heaving himself against a solid wall, both of them cutting themselves on each others’ edges, a sharp blade against a sharp blade, Odin against Odin, two gunbladists with attitude problems, two like-minded polarities driving against each other again and again with teeth. When they see each other now, the air is frosty: he can be warm and joking when he runs into Rinoa on Squall’s arm, but these two have been through too much, until they can’t look at each other.

They skirt around each other.

* * *

 

Fishing with Fujin and Raijin is the only place where none of it matters: they’re always there to provide the inside jokes, the references, the _Remember when we beat up that third year_ and _Remember when Raijin fell in the ocean_ and _Remember when he had that T-board accident_ and _Hey, that was my birthday present, ya know?_ and Seifer sitting back in his chair, letting the bickering wash over him, because it feels like home, home, home.

 

* * *

 

Sometimes, he still finds Edea in his dreams, and it’s always like stumbling across a bear trap, the jaws sliding shut on his leg and sinking deep into bone and muscle.

She’s at the Garden now, back to the dowdy ankle-length dresses and hair unbound, falling in dark curls past her shoulders and down her back. She stands by Cid’s side, a reassuring presence for most of their students—but something sickens and twists in Seifer’s chest when he sees her, nausea clenching at his gut, acid in his throat when he meets those yellow eyes. Something hot and shameful and angry: some sort of longing, desire, fury, some kind of hollow inside him, something that’s been scraped raw and empty.

She took something from him when she sank her claws into his mind, and it’s never quite grown back. He wakes up with sheets clammy with sweat, the memory of Rinoa’s scream ringing through his ears, seeing everything through a haze.

The truth is, that haze expands every day. He can’t really remember the specifics of what he did—it feels as if it happened to someone else, a story heard second-hand—but he knows how it makes him feel.

 

* * *

 

He knows he’s incomplete. There are gaps, and they’re expanding every day, a fire steadily consuming a map and licking at its edges.

Quistis urges him to do sleep studies and tests with the Esthar scientists, as she has—it’s an outrage that they tried such untested materia technology on mere children. It’s a scandal waiting to be unleashed, a monstrous tide of prospective litigation.

But he’s exhausted at the very prospect of it.

He’s already tried once to destroy the place that was his home, he can’t do it again. So Seifer submits to the usual routine psychological evaluations, proving that he’s of sound enough mind to continue using his aeon, fighting in battle, and representing the Garden’s interests, but he refuses the additional testing. They have enough guinea pigs to examine, and besides, he’s functioning, isn’t he?

 

* * *

 

Sometimes he wakes up and thinks that Squall is dead: that the shard of ice went right through him and Seifer stood by and did nothing, simply watching coolly, unfazed, a sardonic smile playing across his face. He often wishes he could claw that expression off, even ten years later, lay into his own face until it’ll be bruised beyond recognition, nothing but battered meat.

* * *

 

Sometimes he wakes up and can’t recognise the blonde lying beside him, her breath rising and falling: if he’s like this at thirty, what is forty going to be like? Fifty? Sixty? _Dementia,_ the word whispers, as soft and sibilant as Edea’s voice ever was, a dragon he cannot conquer.

The others stopped junctioning their own aeons long ago; Squall was the first, immediately assessing the risk to his own mind and cutting it out like a tumor. Seifer knows he should stop, no matter the prestige that comes from wielding Odin, the heady thrill from feeling that unearthly knight bend the knee to his own will. He should stop, as the edges blur even further and the map goes up in flames.

But Seifer Almasy is a brilliant SeeD.

 

 

* * *

 

**go back tosleep.**


End file.
